4K video playback choppy

[SeaComms]

Also I haven't seen many local news outlets broadcasting in 4k, but most do in 1080, so can't really see the point for them to take up the extra space unless they want to zoom in is post processing.

Been editing 4k clips all day and not had any issues apart from ones I generated myself - I accidentally had the output set to a higher frame rate than the original causing it to add in a duplicated frame every 24... That's on a 2 & 1/2 year old laptop, though it is a quad core i7 2.5gig with 16gig ram.....

 

[drepilot]

Oddly, VLC chokes badly on 4K on my Asus laptop but Windows Medial player can play 4K smooth as silk. Go figure.

Absolutely agree. I've always been a huge VLC supporter so was equally surprised to discover that Windows 10 media player does such a good job. Flawless 4K quality on PC. Also in Premiere, no problems at all using CUDA with default settings.

 

[Mark Rowan]

Good morning, I am shooting video on my mavic with all the default camera settings (4K, .mov). When I try to play the video back in QuickTime I experience stuttering and choppiness when viewing on my brand new one month old late 2016 MacBook Pro. I'd prefer this conversation not turn into a PC vs Mac debate, this hardware should be more than sufficient to play the clips. The odd part is, sometimes the same clip will lag, and sometimes it will playback smoothly. Any advice?


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I experienced the same kind of issues on Windows 7 PC. I used direct from card file saved in MOS.I found a "fix"
I played the original video file from the card on my new Windows 10 PC and had no issues on playback. I installed Windows 2012 Movie Maker to the PC and no need for a new video editor.

 

[Deadleg]

Early 2016 MacBook.

Plays 4K just fine in Final Cut. I haven't actually tried play back in Quicktime player. I always use .mp4 so it conceivable the problem is with .mov (although that makes no sense unless DJI borked the .mov container encoding).

Here are some things to try/consider:

- make sure MacBook is plugged in. Many MacBooks step down video card performance when unplugged.

- make sure you have exited out of all other applications.

- make sure you have plenty of free disk space. Delete old videos, etc. Ideally you have over 50% free space on your drive for maximum performance.

- repair disk permissions using Disk Utility (which comes with OSX)

- make sure the issue isn't in the video itself. Render a copy of the video out at 1080p or 720p. If it still skips then the problem is on the capture side.

- how much RAM do you have? 16GB is ideal. More than 16GB would be better, but MacBooks max out at 16.

- normally it's not advisable to defrag a MacOS X hard drive because OS X file system prevents fragmentation and does its own regular maintenance in the background. However, the one exception to this is for people with lots of large files (any thing over 1 or 2 gigs). So if you have a lot of 4K video, that could be you. Try iDefrag. Or spend some extra cash and get Drive Genius (which apples own techs use). NEVER DEFRAG AN SSD drive!

Edit:
FYI: Adobe Premiere doesn't perform as well as Final Cut on a MacBook when playing h.264 video files. QuickTime *should* be the same performance as Final Cut since use the same "engine."

Agree completely about the above points. I used to have stuttering playback even on the Mac Pro (see previous post), but after increasing the free disk space and closing other programs, the playback has been very smooth. Don't let people tell you the Mavic can not handle 4K. My experience is the Mavic records perfectly in 4K every time. With the playback problems sorted out the results are nothing short of spectacular. Editing in FCPX also used to be jittery, but with careful file and disk management, it is now as smooth as silk.

 

[peros550]

Sometimes stuttering may occur if there is a mismatch between the playback device refresh rate and Mavic's recording fps rate. For example, if you are shooting at 30fps but your TV/monitor is set at 50Hz, a stutter effect may appear. Or if you are recording at 25fps and your monitor is set at 60Hz the same could happen. As far as I know, Mac monitors are set at 60Hz, so if the OP has selected PAL which means 25fps, then that could be the root cause of the issue.

 

[tokorobam]

I had the same problem when displaying an 4K video on my my MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013) 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7 with 16GB of RAM. The problem is intermittent for the same video during re-playback which means it's not the Mavic. I noted that the display is a bit smoother on the builtin laptop retina screen verses the external monitor over HDMI.

 

[DanyMavicParrot]

Hi all I just started with my Mavic Pro, moving from other drone and I noticed that even that I shooted in 2.7K My Mac Pro 2010 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 32 GB 1066 MHz DDR3 ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB OSX Sierra run on a SSDrive is playing the clips with a lot of stuttering and choppiness. When I played them on my brand new 2017 13" MacBook Pro 2,9 GHz Intel Core iS. 8GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3 Intel Iris Graphics 550 1536 MB even playing them from the SIMM card trough USB Adapter they played ok.
So my question is what should I change on my Mac Pro 2010 to make it work? Video card? Thanks in advance!!

 

[lazling]

I too had the same issue with 4K playback and not a quick laptop. I was reading a thread somewhere and found Wondershare Video converter (free download) and it worked just fine after that.

Yes, a 4K video transcoding is needed here. The utility I'm using is from Brorsoft studio- an easy-to-use video converter.

 

[troybogert]

With the Mavic footage, I always apply a LUT and the output the footage to a better codec. Then the footage will play fine. A good codecs that looks as good as the original and plays back with ease is DnXHR. It is a high-resolution codec and low bandwidth. H264 sucks massive bandwidth, hence choppy playback.

 

[DroneMan_ID]

I was about to post something and ask about this - I'm glad I didn't. I noticed when playing 4K and 2K on YouTube my videos are choppy. It is more noticeable when playing 4K compare to full-HD. @P0V you think recording in 2K would be better? I understand not most TVs and monitors can actually show 4K, so recording and editing in 4K is not that cool, until all devices we use supports 4K.

 

[SkyeHigh]

Hi all I just started with my Mavic Pro, moving from other drone and I noticed that even that I shooted in 2.7K My Mac Pro 2010 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 32 GB 1066 MHz DDR3 ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB OSX Sierra run on a SSDrive is playing the clips with a lot of stuttering and choppiness. When I played them on my brand new 2017 13" MacBook Pro 2,9 GHz Intel Core iS. 8GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3 Intel Iris Graphics 550 1536 MB even playing them from the SIMM card trough USB Adapter they played ok.
So my question is what should I change on my Mac Pro 2010 to make it work? Video card? Thanks in advance!!

OSX Sierra doesn’t directly support H.265 and doesn’t give hardware acceleration. If your Mac is supported by High Sierra then you’re in luck but I’m not certain if a Mac Pro from 2010 will - my MacBook Pro late 2012 doesn’t.

Best option is to create and use a proxy file or transcode to a supported codec such as Apple ProRes. I’ve been using HandBrake recently to convert 4K H.265 to H.264, which works without issue.